plenty, longevity, robbery, murders, or the like casualties. If such
memorable things were fairly entered, your parish registers would
become chronicles of many strange occurrences that would not otherwise
be known and would be of great use and service for posterity to know."

The clergy have often acted upon this suggestion. In the registers of
Cranbrook, Kent, we find a long account of the great plague that raged
there in 1558, with certain moral reflections on the vice of
"drunkeness which abounded here," on the base characters of the
persons in whose houses the Plague began and ended, on the vehemence
of the infection in "the Inns and Suckling houses of the town, places
of much disorder," and tells how great dearth followed the Plague
"with much wailing and sorrow," and how the judgment of God seemed but
to harden the people in their sin.

The Eastwell register contains copies of the Protestation of 1642, the
Vow and Covenant of 1643, and the Solemn League and Covenant of the
same year, all signed by sundry parishioners, and of the death of the
last of the Plantagenets, Richard by name, a bricklayer by trade, in
1550, whom Richard III acknowledged to be his son on the eve of the
battle of Bosworth. At St. Oswalds, Durham, there is the record of the
hanging and quartering in 1590 of "Duke, Hyll, Hogge and Holyday, iiij
Semynaryes, Papysts, Tretors and Rebels for their horrible offences."
"Burials, 1687 April 17th Georges Vilaus Lord dooke of bookingham," is
the illiterate description of the Duke who was assassinated by Felton
and buried at Helmsley. It is impossible to mention all the gleanings
from parish registers; each parish tells its tale, its trades, its
belief in witchcraft, its burials of soldiers killed in war, its
stories of persecution, riot, sudden deaths, amazing virtues, and
terrible sins. The edicts of the laws of England, wise and foolish,